Resident Evil has quietly been one of gaming’s annual fixtures for the last decade. Since its renaissance, which started with the release of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in 2017, Capcom has released either a port, DLC, new entry, or remake, or sometimes two if not more, every year. The latest entry is Resident Evil 4, a remake of the award-winning 2005 title just as critically acclaimed as the original game. However, now that the year has started, it’s odd we haven’t heard about Capcom’s other plans for Resident Evil, and most fans hope it stays that way.
Make no mistake. There’s still demand for Resident Evil’s brand of survival horror. The only problem? Capcom might want to take a step back if only temporarily.
One of the best things that came out of the backlash to Resident Evil 6 – the game still sold extremely well, it just didn’t have any legs and fans – is that it forced Capcom to rest for the longest time in what feels like forever. Five years separated the release of Resident Evil 6 and Resident Evil 7, which is was enough time for Capcom to dig back deep into its roots and give us an all-time classic.
With Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 4 selling well, there’s no need for Capcom to rush Resident Evil 5 out of the gates. In fact, it shouldn’t go anywhere near RE5.
The main issue with the post-RE4 and pre-RE7 entries in the franchise is they lacked horror and tension that remains in other entries. While RE4 introduced more action and fluidity into the traditionally rigid gameplay in 2005, it wasn’t lacking in hair-raising moments. Both RE5 and RE6 had some but they were far and few in between. Instead, they leaned too heavily on the action, perhaps encouraged by the box office success of the Milla Jovovich-led Resident Evil movies at the time. The result were good games, but terrible Resident Evil entries.
Capcom will be wise to skip RE5 and RE6 and consider remaking its spin-offs instead, like for example, Resident Evil: Code Veronica.
Unfortunately, it’s unclear what Capcom plans to do with Resident Evil. The last we heard was more remakes are coming, but neither a remake or new release is coming this year.
Hopefully, someone over at Capcom has their ears on the ground and are listening to what fans want or, in the case of an RE5 Remake, what they don’t. Otherwise, we’ll see Chris punch a boulder again, albeit in 4K and 60 FPS with ray tracing enabled this time.
Then again, with Capcom flirting with controversy lately with its post-launch DRM updates, it might just be brazen enough to give fans a remake of RE5.
